Trump says resumption of war with Iran 'highly unlikely'

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WASHINGTON - US President Donald Trump on Sunday cast doubt on renewed fighting with Iran, telling CNN that it was "highly unlikely" so long as talks progressed.

In recent weeks, Trump has threatened to renew strikes with US media reports suggesting that hostilities could resume after the US midterm elections this week.

"The answer is highly unlikely it's going to be necessary... I would if necessary, but we hit them really hard. I hit them so hard. You don't know how hard I hit them," Trump said, while warning that any decision to resume hostilities "depends on whether or not they sign a very strong agreement."

Trump previously acknowledged that the highly unpopular war with Iran was at least partially responsible for the stinging defeat that his Republican Party suffered in Tuesday's vote.

In the CNN interview Sunday, Trump once again suggested that the economic pressure Iran is under will force its leaders into accepting a peace deal on the United States' terms.

"They're a failing nation. It just came out, you saw this year, 301 percent inflation," Trump claimed. "They're withering away financially. We've hit them militarily. We could finish them off."

But earlier on Sunday, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi suggested peace talks had been paused while the political fallout of the Democratic Party's landslide victory was being assessed.

"For the past few days, there has been no more travel (by mediators), and the reason for this is the shock that the election results in the United States have caused to everyone," Araghchi told state television. "We now have to see how long it will take for them to digest these results, in order to determine how we are going to move forward."

Iran continues to at least partly block traffic through the strategic Strait of Hormuz, which has dented oil supplies out of the Gulf. That, in turn, has driven up gasoline prices in the United States, contributing to the unpopularity of the war. — Agence France-Presse